The “ruins” by Kallang Airport’s gates

Right by the old gates of the former Kallang Airport, is a crumbling set of structures that pre-date the construction of Singapore’s first civil airport. With a little imagination, the sight of the rather mysterious looking structures could to transport the travel-starved observer to a place like Siem Reap. A closer inspection of the structures will however reveal that the crumbling walls belong not to an ancient temple … or for that matter anything like a palace or istana as recent suggestions have had it as, but to a raised burial plot.

The raised former burial plot, seen in August 2018.

The plot, which shared a boundary with the former Firestone Factory that was established in the 1920s (some may remember the former factory building on the banks of the Kallang River near Sir Arthur Bridge being used by electrical good and furniture retailer Courts in the 1990s), is marked in a 1930 survey map as a “Mohammedan Cemetery” and in a 1936 plan for the new Civil Aerodrome (i.e. Kallang Airport) quite simply as “graves”. An explanation as to why the graves were placed on a raised plot can be found in a 1939 letter to the Straits Times. The writer, who described its location to a tee in saying that an elevated plot of graves could be “seen just inside the entrance to the civil aerodrome, on the right”, recalled seeing them on small eyots or “patches of higher ground” in the mangrove swamp “before the place was reclaimed”. Reclamation work for the airport, it should be noted, was carried out in the 1930s.

The plot in January 2014, with the old airport gates in the background.

While there are no traces of the graves today — they were exhumed sometime in the late 1980s, there is still an item of physical evidence that still exists, if one looks for it along the base on which the structures rests. There, a tablet with inscriptions in the Tamil script can be found and that does in fact confirm that the site was indeed a burial plot — at least based on a translation provided by a local urban exploration group on Facebook in 2019. This translation dates the tablet to 1854, as a burial site for the “kith and kin” of Chinnakkani” — a descendant of “Hajji Ismail of Thiruvarur”.

The tablet seen in September 2018.

The plot in September 2018.

The plot shown in a 1930 survey map (NAS).

The plot shown in a 1936 plan for the aerodrome (NAS).

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The Royal Singapore Flying Club at Kallang

It isn’t only a playable surface, the tolerance that both players and spectators had for the rain, and the roar that has been lost with the building of the new National Stadium at Kallang.

The Royal SIngapore Flying Club’s clubhouse at the Kallang Civil Aerodrome in 1937.

Several structures around the old stadium, with their own links to the area’s history, have also been lost with the old stadium’s demolition, on of which was a little building that had been home to what had then been the “only flying club in the Empire to have received a royal charter”.

The new National Stadium seen at sunrise.

The building’s life began in 1937, serving as a clubhouse that was also the headquarters of the Royal Singapore Flying Club. The move of the club, which was established in 1928 and counted many prominent figures of the community among its members, from its previous premises in Trafalgar Street to Kallang coincided with the opening of the new Civil Aerodrome, and allowed the club to expand its range of activities.

The side of the building, as seen in 2009.

A Straits Times article dated 12 June 1937 describes the building at its opening:

The new headquarters of the flying club are conveniently located between the terminal building and the slipway of the seaplane anchorage. The building is of reinforced concrete throughout and is carried on precast piling. Accommodation is provided on the ground floor for offices and dressing rooms with the principal rooms to be found on the upper floor. 

The club room is approximately 50 feet by 18 feet. A kitchen and bar are provided and a committee room is at the rear over the carriage porch. The club room opens to an uncovered balcony through large collapsible doors which will enable members to sit inside under cover if necessary and yet have a clear view of the landing ground.

The main staircase is continued from the upper floor to the flat roof, which commands a fine view over the aerodrome and seaplane anchorage.

The front of the building in 2009 with the balcony and an expanded third floor.

Together with a hangar for seaplanes, it served the flying club for some 20 years. The move of the civil airport in 1955, prompted the club’s own move to Paya Lebar, which was completed in 1957. The clubhouse building was to survive for another 53 years. The construction of Nicoll Highway that the move of the airport allowed, cut it off from the cluster of aviation related structures close to the former airport’s terminal building, isolating it on a narrow wedge of land lying in the highway’s shadow.

The back of the building.

With the conversation of what became Kallang Park for sports use that came with the building of the old stadium in 1973, the former flying club’s HQ came under the Singapore Sports Council and was last used, on the basis of the signs left behind, as a “sports garden”. Abandoned in its latter years, it lay forgotten, wearing the appearance of a well worn and discarded building.

The building’s windows seen through a fence.

Demolished in late 2010, its site now lies buried under a road – close to the roundabout at the OCBC Acquatic Centre. And, while the club, which since became the Republic of Singapore Flying Club (in 1967), has not necessarily been forgotten; its association with Kallang, and the role the location played as a springboard for the expansion of recreational aviation, must surely have been.